An art installation, My Meditations End in Reverie, by UC San Diego student Elizabeth Stringer is now on display through May. The exhibition is divided into two parts, located in both the Seuss Room Foyer within Geisel Library and in the Biomedical Library Building entry.

With an educational background as a double major in Human Biology and Art Studio Practice, Stringer has found herself within a world of growing rationalism in contemporary science and society. By allowing this mode of thinking to be the guide of passion, she investigates the poetic microcosm, a private world of self that is able to incorporate and convey the many facets of the world within a singular moment, which is more specifically contained within the informative lens of research. Read more…

Collection endowments have been critical in supporting and growing the Library’s collections, ensuring that the Library’s information resources will be maintained and enhanced in perpetuity. Over the years, supporters of the UC San Diego Library have established more than 50 collection endowments that support academic disciplines and intellectual interests. Recently, several collection endowments have been enhanced or newly established—including one from a long established San Diego family, as well as endowments from a UC San Diego faculty member and an alumna.

Robert and Fredricka Driver

In December 2014, a significant gift was made by the children of Robert and Fredricka Driver to strengthen the Fredricka Driver Endowment Library Fund. This endowment was established in 1986, in conjunction with an NEH matching grant by long-time San Diegan and civic leader, Robert “Bob” Driver, in honor of his wife, Fredricka, best known as Freddie.

“My parents had a deep love of learning and were thrilled when UC San Diego was established in 1960, in a location so close to their Del Mar home,” said Sandy Driver-Gordon. “My mother especially appreciated what an education could bring, as she attended Pomona College at a time when women generally did not pursue higher education.”

The Driver family also demonstrated their generosity to the San Diego community in numerous ways. Bob—founder of one of San Diego’s most prominent independent insurance brokerage firms—was a major supporter of Project Concern (now Project Concern International), a humanitarian, San Diego-based non-profit, and also ran for a number of political offices. Freddie’s many charitable activities included volunteering as head of the San Diego Girl Scouts and Door of Hope, a home for unwed mothers.

“With this recent gift,” said “the Driver endowment is now one of the Library’s largest collection endowments and provides significant support for the humanities materials. We thank the Driver family for their continued commitment to the Library and the University,” said University Librarian Brian Schottlaender. “We are also very grateful to Pamela Newcomb and Clare and Paul Friedman for their support.”

In addition to the Driver family, a new endowment—the Pamela Newcomb Library Collection Endowment—has been established by UC San Diego alumna Pamela Newcomb, in support of humanities collections. Pamela graduated in 1981,

Pamela Newcomb

with a degree in history and classical studies and felt that the Library supported her studies in a very meaningful way. “I am enthusiastic to be able to create this endowment in support of the humanities collections,” said Pamela. “The Library was so important to my educational experience at UC San Diego and I feel fortunate that I can now support the excellence of the information resources available to future generations of students, faculty, and the general public.” Pamela’s gift will help nurture a new generation of humanities scholars who can take advantage of cutting-edge research materials in classical studies, history, art, philosophy, literature, music, and other topics that form many cultural heritages.

A second collection endowment was established by long-time Library supporters, Paul and Clare Friedman, whose endowment provides unrestricted support for the Library’s general research collections. Paul Friedman is a professor emeritus at UC San Diego; Clare Friedman is a retired faculty member at USD.

Paul and Clare Friedman

“We are delighted to establish the Paul and Clare Friedman Library Collection Endowment at the UC San Diego Library,” said the Friedmans. “As emeriti faculty and lifelong readers, it means a great deal to us to support the Library’s collections and their vital role in fueling discovery and learning at UC San Diego and beyond. We have supported the Library for many years and felt it was the right time to create an endowed fund that will impact the resources available to students and faculty for generations to come. We encourage others to do the same!”

If you are interested in providing collection endowment support to the UC San Diego Library, please contact Julie Sully, Director of Development, at 858-822-4554 or jsully@ucsd.edu.

Germans in the Pacific World, an exhibition of materials from the Library’s Special Collections & Archives, traces the trajectories of German explorers, missionaries, entrepreneurs, and others, who ventured into the Pacific to explore that ocean’s vast landmasses and numerous islands. The exhibit, which is on display in Geisel Library thru the end of spring quarter, depicts the myriad ways the German presence shaped the region’s history, and led to the creation of newly documented knowledge about the peoples, geography, fauna, and flora in and around the Pacific.

Germans in the Pacific World was curated by Professor Ulrike Strasser and graduate student Sky Johnston, of the UC San Diego History Department. The exhibit was mounted to coincide with an international symposium on “Germans in the Pacific World from the Late 17th to 20th Century,” which examined knowledge transfer from the early modern period through the 19th and 20th centuries.

Materials in the exhibit include early depictions and descriptions of California’s people, landscape, mineral riches, and animals, ranging from the first European map of the California peninsula produced in 1702, to the large atlas issued to accompany the Voyage de Humboldt et Bonpland, led by the famous German explorer, Alexander v. Humboldt.

Also included are texts and images associated with 19th and 20th century German travelers, colonialism, and racial science, as well as a volume on birds of California and the Sandwich Islands, the name given by Captain James Cook to the Hawaiian Islands. The book depicts the majestic white Pelican and other Pacific birds, which caught the attention of German zoologists and explorers.

California drew many German immigrants to its coast during and long after the Gold Rush. One such man, Paul Alexander, recounted his experiences and offered his views on California and its peoples in print. This volume of helpful information for prospective travelers and immigrants appeared in a series of handbooks pitched to Germans for one mark per volume. Earlier volumes included guides to Wisconsin, Argentina, and Canada, and an introduction to the English language. The Pacific coast was the new frontier. Accordingly, Alexander’s account of California was followed with a book on Oregon. As seen here, the volume was small enough for a traveler to carry on his person.

Brian E. C. Schottlaender, The Audrey Geisel University Librarian at UC San Diego, has been named the 2015 winner of the American Library Association’s Hugh C. Atkinson Memorial Award. Schottlaender, will receive a cash award and citation during the 2015 ALA Annual Conference in San Francisco this June.

Named in honor of one of the pioneers of library automation, the Atkinson Award recognizes an academic librarian who has made significant contributions in the area of library automation or management and has made notable improvements in library services or research.

“Brian is a visionary giant in the Hugh Atkinson mold,” said Nancy J. Gibbs, Hugh C. Atkinson Memorial Award committee chair for ALA and former head of the Acquisitions Department at Duke University. “He has eloquently articulated a vision for the 21st century academic library while finding balance with the need for physical resources, services, staff, and space. He understands we must work collaboratively in order to address the most challenging concerns facing libraries today. The Hugh Atkinson Award recognizes risk taking as a value in library management and Brian has demonstrated taking calculated risks that have proven transformational for libraries. This is evident in just a few of the initiatives he has shepherded: the Western Regional Storage Trust (WEST); Hathi Trust, Pacific Rim Digital Library Alliance, and Chronopolis, an effort in extensible digital preservation.”

“Brian has served as president of ALA/ALCTS and is currently the ALA Councilor from that division,” continued Gibbs. “He has served as president of the Association of Research Libraries and has recently been elected chair of the new Board of Governors of the Hathi Trust. In each instance Brian has brought his commitment to the library community, helping to restructure and provide a vision for the future, shaping ideas into outcomes. His commitment to academic libraries, scholarly research and the library community as a whole are truly impressive. He can always be counted on to provide leadership, collaboration, and a keen understanding of the shifts occurring today as libraries address solutions to shared problems for the future.”

Schottlaender, UC San Diego’s University Librarian since 1999, was an early adopter of collaborative, cutting-edge initiatives and technologies to advance digitization and digital preservation on a national and global scale. He is immediate Past Chair of the Board of Governors of HathiTrust, a consortium of universities—led by the University of California and the University of Michigan— that is building one of the largest online collections of books ever assembled. He is also an inaugural member of the Board of the Digital Preservation Network, and the UC San Diego Library was the first in Southern California to partner with Google on its global book digitization project. Schottlaender has also played a leadership role in building the Pacific Rim Digital Library Alliance—an international consortium of more than 30 major academic libraries—to facilitate user access to scholarly research materials from and across the Pacific.

He serves on numerous other boards, including the Board of Trustees of OCLC; the Board of Directors of the Association for Research Libraries, and the Executive Committee of the UC San Diego-based San Diego Supercomputer Center. Schottlaender received his B.A. in German Literature, ampla cum laude, from the University of Texas at Austin, and his M.L.S. from Indiana University. Prior to joining UC San Diego, he held librarian positions at UCLA, University of Arizona, and Indiana University.

An active researcher, Schottlaender is currently Investigator for two Mellon Foundation grants, one to develop a distributed, shared journals repository (WEST), and the other to create a next-generation suite of software tools for managing archival collections (ArchivesSpace). He also directs Chronopolis, a Library of Congress-supported initiative funded by the Digital Preservation Network to build the infrastructure needed to collect and preserve at-risk digital information for the long term.

Over the last decade, Schottlaender has been the recipient of numerous awards for his leadership and accomplishments in the Library world, including the American Library Association’s Melvil Dewey Medal (2010) for “creative leadership of a high order,” and the ALA’s Ross Atkinson Lifetime Achievement Award (2007) for “extraordinary service in the field of collections management.”

The Digital Public Library of America (DPLA)brings together the riches of America’s libraries, archives, and museums, and makes them freely available to the world online. An online library into the United States’ historical and cultural heritage, DPLA aggregates metadata — or information describing an item — and thumbnails for millions of photographs, manuscripts, books, sounds, moving images, and more.

The UC Libraries have recently joined the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) as a Content Hub. In our role as a DPLA Content Hub, the California Digital Library will be sharing metadata records from Calisphere, a website containing approximately 250,000 digital primary source objects contributed by libraries, archives, and museums across the state of California– including unique content from across the UC Libraries. Because of the increased exposure, the UC Libraries’ digital resources will have a broader, nationwide audience that will be able to find and discover unique collections maintained across the UC Libraries.

This year’s Holocaust Living History Workshop Series, a collaboration between the UC San Diego Library and the University’s Judaic Studies Program, will explore the themes of “Hidden Stories: Legacy of Pain” as they represent survivor experiences.

For nearly 70 years, historians, sociologists, literary theorists, and other academics have tried to make sense of the Holocaust, one of the 20th century’s most disturbing and enigmatic calamities. Despite the massive amount of scholarship that has been generated, some stories and experiences remain lost, neglected or forgotten outright. As part of its mission to educate and raise awareness, the Holocaust Living History Workshop focuses on both well-known and less familiar stories and narratives of the Shoah. This fall’s lecture series sheds light on those lost, forgotten, or poorly documented stories and experiences from the past, to promote a richer understanding of the Holocaust’s myriad dimensions.

Interested members of the public and campus community are invited to attend the events and hear local Holocaust survivors, witnesses, relatives, and scholars share their stories. Participants can also learn about the Visual History Archive, the world’s largest database of Holocaust testimony. All sessions, free and open to the public, will be held in Geisel Library’s Seuss Room, from 5 to 7 p.m. Refreshments will be served.

Oct. 22: Getting Here: An Odyssey through WW II /Ruth Hohberg

Born in Bielsko, Poland, Ruth Weiss Hohberg fled eastward during WWII. Her parents were forced into a Siberian labor camp and then relocated to Uzbekistan, where Ruth attended school. At war’s end, she returned to her hometown, only to find the population unwilling to accept returning Jews. After an interlude in Sweden, she arrived in the United States. Her long ordeal depicts an experience that is less familiar to scholars of the Holocaust, yet it is in urgent need of exposure. Hohberg is an artist and writer and lives in Rancho Bernardo.

Nov. 13: Hitler’s Furies: Ordinary Women? /Wendy Lower

Award-winning historian Wendy Lower delves into the lives and experiences of German women in the Nazi killing fields. Her research chillingly debunks the age-old myth of the German woman as mother and breeder, removed from the tough, male-dominated world of politics and war. The women Lower labels “furies” humiliated their victims, plundered their goods, and often killed them. And, like many of their male counterparts, they got away with murder. Lower is the John K. Roth Professor of History at Claremont McKenna University and has published widely on the Shoah in Eastern Europe.

To find out more about UC San Diego’s Holocaust Living History Workshop, contact Susanne Hillman, the program coordinator at hlhw@ucsd.edu or go to: http://libraries.ucsd.edu/hlhw. Training in the use of the Visual History Archive is available for individuals and groups upon appointment.

Co-sponsored by the UC San Diego Library, the UCSD Alumni Association, and the Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs, the annual prize includes cash awards of $1000 and $500 for first and second place. Awards are given in two categories, Social Sciences, Arts & Humanities, and Physical and Life Sciences, to undergraduate students who demonstrate exceptional research skills and use of The Library’s resources in research undertaken at UCSD. We applaud this year’s winners for their intellectual prowess, and stellar critical thinking and research skills.

In the Social Sciences, Arts & Humanities category, first prize went to Jessica Knapp for her project, “The Effects of Mental Illness on the Javanese Family.” Second prize was awarded to Jessica Gross for her project, “Religious Women as Apothecaries and Practitioners in Early Modern France.”

First prize in the Life and Physical Sciences category went to Maarouf Saad for his project, “Alcohol-Dysregulated MicroRNAs in the Pathogenesis of Oropharyngeal Cancer.” And, second prize was awarded to Adam Simon for his project, “Synthesis of a Novel 2-Deoxystreptamine Mimetic: Building Blocks for Aminoglycoside Analogs.”

To be considered for the Undergraduate Libraries Research Prize, students must be nominated by faculty members and must participate in either the annual UC San Diego Undergraduate Research Conference held in the spring, or in other university programs that foster and recognize student research and scholarship. The Undergraduate Research Conference is one of three major undergraduate scholarly meetings that the Academic Enrichment Programs coordinate each year that afford students from all academic disciplines the opportunity to present findings of research conducted under the guidance of UC San Diego faculty members.

The Digital Collections website contains more than 65,000 digital items that include documents, photographs, audio, video, and data sets that are unique to the UC San Diego Library.

Unique Digital Collections include the Baja California Collection, the Dr. Seuss Collection, the Missions of Alta California, the Spanish Civil War Collection, the Tuzin Archive for Melanesian Anthropology, and UC San Diego History.

We are in a test phase before replacing our current site: https://libraries.ucsd.edu/digital/ Help us by being a beta tester. We encourage you to use the “Help” menu of the site to report bugs or to submit any suggestions for improvement.

The new Digital Collections website incorporates responsive web design so you can browse the site on all your devices. Browse and discover the unique collections contained in our Digital Collections website at: Browse by Collection.